Sir, - Living in Dublin, the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at Oxford University, Terry Eagleton, has evident credentials as an expert in dislocation ("Skinner's and dipper's guide to dislocation", Weekend, November 20th). Less predictable is his apparent predilection for skimming and dipping. How else, though, to account for his assertion that, in Colm Toibin's The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction, "Sterne is rightly considered an Irish writer, as he was not by the Field Day Anthology"? When Prof Eagleton next dips into the Field Day Anthology (Vol. i, pp. 705-17), however, he may pull out some substantial plums from Tristram Shandy (TS, I, chaps. 1-6, VI, 6-10, IX, 26-33), placed there by - Yours, etc., Ian Campbell Ross,
Trinity College, Dublin 2.